Beauty, Mercy, Justice

Another Religious Nationalist?

On March 1, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church said the following:

During the last three months, the church, especially the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, was with its people. And it will continue to remain with its people. If, God forbid, we will have to stand together on the battlefield with our soldiers, with our army, the Ukrainian Church, especially the UGCC, is ready to provide pastoral support. Every citizen of Ukraine must be prepared to defend his or her independent and sovereign state. ..Our people and our country are currently in danger. We must stand up for our country, to be ready – if necessary – to sacrifice our lives in order to protect the sovereign, free, independent, and unified state. And here we are absolutely united. We now need to think about what unites us. Our state is a multinational, multiconfessional, but we all have to be together to defend our own independent and sovereign state.

Three years ago, when this man was named Major Archbishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, I was impressed. His relative youth, his eloquence; all spoke of great promise.

But these words are fuel on a volatile situation. The Church should be a voice of reason and peace, urging nonviolent solutions -like Pope Francis urging dialogue- not promising to join the troops on the battlefield.

And to an outsider, the crisis in Ukraine looks more complex than many of the narratives that are circulating. Roughly half of the nation identifies with Russia, and near that speaks Russian, not Ukrainian, mutually intelligible “languages” which are more like dialects than distinct tongues.

While there is no parallel, one can imagine the American response to such a crisis. Indeed, we have intervened time and again half way around the world when American strategic -or corporate- interests were seen as threatened. Russia is responding to unrest right next door, in a country with a large Russian ethnic minority (majority in Crimea).

None of which means I am defending either Putin or the exiled Ukrainian president.

But that young archbishop? The one who seemed so promising?

He is looking more and more like just another religious nationalist.

The context of the conflict.

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13 Responses

So was St. Augustine, who considered the only time war could be justified was under an active invasion, which is what has happened regularly in the Ukraine for the past 900 years, including the current event.

It’s easy to judge the situation of Ukraine, and its Catholic population, from the comfort of one’s keyboard. The situation is manifestly different on the ground.

The threat of a Russian invasion is not a hypothetical; it is a reality, and has been a persistent reality in the history of Ukraine, for quite some time. The Catholic Church there knows all too well the bitter fruits of Russian aggression, and it knows all too well that the independence of Ukraine means, at least for the time being, the preservation of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. To state that it will join its flock on the battlefield is to affirm nothing more or less than what the Church has affirmed throughout history: That in times of conflict and war, it will be there to minister to the soldiers; provide last rites/unction for the wounded and dying; and pray for the dead. The priests of the Ukrainian Church will do this without any means of defending themselves. They will place their trust in God.

Dialogue, discussion, chatter, empty-headed (and, ironically, hard-hearted) pacifism are the luxury of outsiders. The Archbishop issued no words calling on Ukrainians to fight Russia; he did not say that war is the only solution, but if war comes, it will come from Russia, not from Ukraine. While the territorial sovereignty of Crimea is complicated — perhaps more complicated than it should have been, but hindsight is 20/20 — the rest of Ukraine, regardless of the tongue it speaks or the ethnic identity of its habitants, is Ukrainian. Russia has no just interest invading the country, and really, the only true interest it has here is using Ukraine, as it has long used Ukraine, as a barrier against the West.

Hopefully, given President Putin’s speech today, it won’t come at all. Apparently he’s concerned only for the protection of his naval base on the Black Sea and the ethnic Russians in the Crimea Peninsula, most of which are related to Naval Base personnel.

That’s my hope as well. I don’t know enough about the economics of Ukraine to know what the loss of the region to Russia would mean for the country as a whole. As I understand it, Russia’s interest there is limited to its naval base. I am skeptical of the “protecting ethnic Russians” claim, because that’s the same rhetoric he deployed during the invasion of Georgia in 2008. It’s a pretty easy excuse to use, and it has the appearance of humanitarianism about it. To the best of my knowledge, there have been no reports of widespread reprisals against ethnic Russians in Ukraine since the protests, though it wouldn’t be unlike Moscow to take a Twitter entry about some Russian losing a bar fight as a pretext for military invasion.

To state that the Church is prepared to join its flock on the battlefield instead of calling for nonviolence and calm is irresponsible if not inflammatory. Again, imagine the US response if there was unrest in a neighboring country that endangered Americans and American military bases. While the jury is still out on just how crazy Putin is, his response so far is mild compared to historical American responses when US strategic or corporate interests were seen as threatened.

Not everyone lives a quiet life in the Midwest far removed from anything more galling than Walmart billboards or risks higher than those usually associated with driving an automobile or eating fast food. In other words, your pacifism, while a commendable personal choice that I am sure you would be willing to risk a lot for, makes for a rickety soapbox in this instance.

As for Russia’s response, I acknowledged to Ted that the Crimera is complicated. But I think there is a very legitimate concern of “first Crimea, then Kiev.” If the Metropolitan had said, “Let us go and free Crimera from the Muscovite horde!” (or something to that effect), then fine; his words would not only be extremely imprudent, they would be immoral as well. My takeaway from the bishop’s words was this: The Ukrainian Church has stayed with its flock thus far in the crisis; it will not abandon it if war is brought to Ukraine by Russia.

Nice try with the condescension. But in fact there have been any number of nonviolent social movements, and the Church has embraced that tactic. Assuring the Church’s accompaniment on the battlefield rather than urging peace seems inflammatory.

Isn’t that a good argument, though, for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-MP and the Moscow Patriarch to step in together to push for a peaceful resolution to this situation? The other two Ukrainian Orthodox churches, along with the Ukrainian Catholics, lack legitimacy in (most) Russian and (many) East Ukrainian eyes.

What’s interesting here is that after years of Orthodox in the West speaking of the ascendency of the new “Holy Russia” and the role the MP plays in Russian socio-political life, some of these voices are now saying that the MP “can’t do anything about” the Ukrainian situation or the potential invasion of the country as a whole by Russia. Uh huh. I’m incredulous. Let’s not forget that the current Patriarch is the architect of the “Russian World” ideology whereby Ukraine, and perhaps other former Soviet satellite states, rightfully belong to it. While the MP has made some calls for peace, an independent, Western-leaning Ukraine with two non-MP Ukrainian Churches, and the Ukrainian Catholics, being allowed to operate freely would be a serious slap in the face to the Russian Orthodox Church’s global aspirations.

I think you judge the Patriarch too harshly. He prays that God may forbid a situation where the Ukrainian people must defend themselves against a foreign imperialist invasion. But he says that if that prayer is unanswered, the Church will stand with the people.

The independent reports show that Ukrainian citizens oppose Russian annexation of their country — not just those who speak the Ukrainian language but Russian speaking ethnic Ukrainians, the Russian speaking Tatars (with their tragic history) and even ethnic Russians, particularly the young.

Sts. Volodymyr and Olha, pray for us, pray for peace and pray for Ukraine!